The heat, which usually occurs only at the height of summer, is being driven by a so-called “heat dome” of warm air from North Africa that has become trapped beneath a high-pressure system over western Europe. Another factor is that Europe is warming significantly faster than the rest of the planet, meaning each new heatwave is more intense because it starts from a higher baseline.
The Earth is currently about 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer than in pre-industrial times. Strictly speaking, of course, it is not the entire planet that is warmer, but rather the air near its surface, which is crucial for the conditions needed to sustain life.
By contrast, Europe has warmed by about 2.4 degrees Celsius compared with the pre-industrial era, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “Almost all of this heat is caused by the human-induced greenhouse effect resulting from fossil fuel emissions, while the actual distribution of this excess heat is determined by several factors,” Ben Clarke, who researches extreme weather and climate change at Imperial College London, told AFP.
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There is no single cause; rather, several smaller factors are acting together. The first is the fact that air and land warm much faster than water. As a result, continents generally warm faster than the global average. The seemingly absurd claim that all continents are actually warming faster than the average is therefore physically entirely correct and logical.
Another cause is the Arctic, which is warming by far the fastest on the planet. According to the Copernicus programme, the Arctic is 3.2 degrees Celsius warmer than in pre-industrial times. A significant part of the Arctic also belongs to the European continent.
Why the Arctic in particular? This phenomenon has a technical name: Arctic amplification. The cause is again very simple: as warming causes sea ice and land snow to melt, it exposes areas of darker land and water. Dark surfaces absorb more heat than light ones, which reflect it, causing further warming. These changes then spread from the Arctic to the rest of the European continent.
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Europe has, paradoxically, partly caused the problem itself by reducing industrial pollution. Aerosols produced by industry naturally reflect part of the Sun’s radiation back into space, creating a cooling effect. As industry and transport in Europe have shifted to cleaner technologies, aerosol concentrations have fallen, allowing more energy to reach the Earth’s surface.
Europe has cleaned up its industry more than any other region in global comparison, so this effect is strongest there. This is also confirmed by a study published in Nature Geoscience: the decline in European aerosol emissions since 1980 explains a substantial part of Arctic warming and, by extension, warming in Europe itself.
Nor can the fact be ignored that Europe is the most densely populated continent, meaning that the urban heat island effect has its strongest impact there. Concrete and asphalt, which make up much of major cities, accumulate more heat during the day and release less of it back into the atmosphere at night, causing more heat to remain there over the long term.
Again, it has a whole range of impacts. According to the Copernicus programme, changes in air circulation are leading to more frequent and more intense heatwaves during the European summer. High-pressure systems also appear to be becoming more common as a result, and it is precisely these systems that cause higher temperatures and, above all, the heat domes described above — long-lasting stable weather patterns in which heat cannot escape from the land.
“If we look at the last twenty to thirty years, anticyclonic conditions have prevailed, especially in summer, increasing the likelihood of heatwaves,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus programme.
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An article written by Tomáš Karlík (CT), initially published on 29 May 2026 at 09:12 (CEST)